Today, we can use the Internet to explore art, culture, and religion from around the world. Long ago, people were limited to what they could learn from books, magazines, or better yet, in person. During the Victorian era in England (after Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to January 1901), large public exhibitions became popular.
These exhibitions, such as the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in London in 1851, presented to the public the artistic and scientific achievements of different cultural groups. In 1883, a biblical scholar (a person who studies the Bible) named Thomas Newberry designed a model, or small three-dimensional copy, of the ancient solomon templebased on descriptions of its architecture in the Bible.
Four years later, the model was featured as the centerpiece of one of these great public exhibitions: the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition. This exhibition was the first public exhibition of Jewish religious art, called Judaica, and having it on view to thousands of visitors from different cultural and religious backgrounds made people more interested in Jewish art than ever before.
Maybe you may be interested in:
Solomon’s Temple
According to Jewish tradition, Solomon’s Temple, also known as “the first temple“, was built by King Solomon long ago on the spot where God created Adam, the first man. But the building was destroyed four hundred years later. It was replaced by the Second Temple, which was built by groups of returning Jewish exiles to Jerusalem.
The Temple site is considered one of the holiest places in the world and it is important to Jews, Muslims and Christians all over the world. Today, Biblical scholars use archeology to search for traces of the ancient structure. Newberry, however, based the design of his model on descriptions of the Temple’s architecture and furnishings written in the Bible.
I thought that every part of the construction of the temple, from the material used to build the walls to the techniques used to set the stones in place, had spiritual significance. The Newberry scale model matches these descriptions as closely as possible. Let’s take a closer look at some of the interior rooms.
the holy place
The largest room in Solomon’s temple is called the Holy Place. Is he main hall of the temple. According to tradition, only the priests responsible for the maintenance of the furniture of the site were allowed to enter. As described in the Bible, the walls and floors in the Newberry model are lined with gold leaf adorned with palm trees and cherubs.
inside there is ten golden candlestickswhich are said to have illuminated the Holy Place and burned continuously in the Temple during the day and night.
For Newberry, the constant light of the lamps symbolized God’s gracious message to humanity. Beside each candlestick is a golden table to display a loaf of bread.
These loaves, called showbread, symbolize God’s gift of food to the people of Israel.
At the end of the room is a cedar wood altar covered in gold, called the altar of incense. Lighting incense every night was one of the duties of the priests who were allowed to enter the Holy Place.
holiest room
At the west end of the Holy Place, behind the altar of incense, is the entrance to the most sacred room in the temple: the Holy of Holies.
It is said that no one was allowed inside, except once a year on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday when worshipers fast and atone for their sins.
On that day, the High Priest was allowed to enter to make offerings to God. Synagogues around the world have a special cabinet called ark to contain Torah scrolls.
According to Jewish tradition, each chest is considered a miniature version of this room.
the ark of the covenant
According to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was kept in the Holy of Holies.
The chest is made of a special wood and covered with gold, and is said to have been given to Moses by God.
Inside were the two stone tablets on which Moses copied the Ten Commandments. The Ark of the Covenant symbolizes the continuous presence of God among his people.
When it was displayed at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, the model of the Temple not only taught people about its construction, but also about its symbolism.
We can learn a lot from virtual experiences and looking at pictures, but sometimes an in-person experience just can’t be beat.
How big was Solomon’s temple?
The Bible’s description of Solomon’s Temple (also called The First Temple) suggests that the interior ceiling was 180 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 50 feet high. The highest point of the temple that King Solomon built was actually 120 cubits high (about 20 stories or about 207 feet).
According to the Bible, the temple it was built with quarry stone blocks masterfully, with a ceiling and an interior lined with luxurious wooden planks. Solomon used pure gold to cover the temple’s sacred inner sanctuary, where he also placed a pair of 15-foot-tall gold cherubs, sphinxes, to guard the Ark of the Covenant.
Who was Solomon?
The Bible describes Solomon as a wise ruler and a great builder who lived at the height of the kingdom of Israel. He also says that he had a luxurious palace, a great army, and an empire that included all of Israel. However, there is no archaeological evidence that the man Solomon ever existed.
Despite living in a time when scribes were probably already writing the Bible, no inscriptions in the entire region bear his name. That leaves archaeologists unclear whether Israel’s third king was real, or more like other legendary rulers in history, from Britain’s King Arthur to Romulus, the supposed founder of Rome.
One thing that would help is for archaeologists to find some contemporary evidence of Solomon’s existence outside of the Bible. Such a find could help underpin the entirety of the Biblical story.
Maybe you want to know:
Proofs of Solomon’s existence
A possible sign of hope appeared in 1993. Researchers were excavating at a site called Tel Dan in northern Israel, when Hebrew Union College archaeologist Gila Cook spotted a large stone covered in Aramaic script, an archaic relative of Hebrew. In the text on the stone, now known as the stele of Tel Danan Aramaic king records a conflict with the kings of Israel and proclaims victory over the “House of David.”
The stela of tel dan it probably dates from more than a century after the death of King Solomon. However, it does provide some evidence that David may have been a real person. The are still excavating at the site today. And over the past decade, a few other tantalizing potential clues have begun to emerge.
In 2010, a team of archaeologists led by Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said they had discovered a monumentally large wall segment while excavating in the oldest part of Jerusalem in search of King David’s palace. Finds at the site, called Ofhel, included a section of wall approximately 210 feet long, complete with a gatehouse, corner tower, and royal structure.
The features were so large that researchers were convinced it was just one part of a truly massive building. The dating of the site proved controversial, but some radiocarbon dates put the site right in the middle of Solomon’s reign. “This is the first time a structure from that time has been found that can be correlated with written descriptions of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.”
Assault on Solomon’s temple
There is a long history of archaeologists searching for, and even claiming to have discovered, signs of Israel’s power during the time of King Solomon. At one point nearly a century ago, excavators said they had discovered Solomon’s stables at a site called Megiddo, the focus of the Biblical story of Armageddon.
The Bible says that Megiddo and two other cities were used to house the horses and riders of their legendary chariots. However, excavations in more recent years have been unable to find any evidence of horse bones or other obvious signs of a cavalry. In fact, so far there are no signs of the Israel of Solomon.
Other researchers have searched for Solomon’s Legendary Mines. These would have been vital in securing the precious minerals and wealth needed to build the First Temple. Many have come up empty handed. But in research published in 2017, archaeologists said they have found evidence of extensive ancient copper mining in a nearby part of Jordan.
The time period seems to match, and if Israel was in control of the area back then, it could have been a key source of minerals and wealth. Beyond the archaeological finds, Biblical historians have found other reasons to doubt the traditional stories of Solomon. To begin with, the text contains a number of fantastic claims.
Throughout his life, the Bible says that Solomon married about 700 wives and 300 concubines, a number that opens the imagination. One of those wives was also said to be “Pharaoh’s daughter”. However, Egyptian records do not preserve that marriage. And some scholars say that the pharaohs were notoriously reluctant to marry off their daughters for fear of losing power.
But perhaps the most doubt-inducing claim is that Solomon had a staggering 1,400 chariots, suggesting an army large enough to rival other great civilizations. Lack of physical evidence of Solomon’s stables aside, a war victory inscription and the Bible itself state that the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak managed to conquer Israel, sack Jerusalem and steal all the treasures of the First Temple just five years after Solomon’s death.
The speed of the campaign suggests an easy victory, which seems unlikely if the former Israeli empire really did have such military power at the time. The outsized claims have led some Biblical scholars to suggest that Solomon’s strength was invented by historians many centuries later as a way to bring his civilization on a par with other great kingdoms.
Archaeological Evidence of the Biblical Story
Ultimately, the biggest obstacle to finding the temple of king solomon it also gets to the core of why it’s so interesting to us in the first place. The kingdom of Israel would eventually reshape the culture and religions of the world. And the Temple Mount in ancient Jerusalem, home to the First and Second Temples, is perhaps the holiest site in…